On Friday, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) said that it has rationalized merchant discount rate (MDR) for RuPay debit card transactions with effect from 20 October 2019.

The rationalisation has been done across point of sale (PoS), eCom and Bharat QR code-based merchant transactions, a press release said.

It said MDR has been revised to 0.60 percent for transactions above Rs 2,000 with a maximum cap of Rs 150 per transaction. Presently, there is a cap at 0.90 percent for transactions above Rs 2,000 with a higher cap of Rs 1,000 per transaction.

The card based QR transactions (Bharat QR) MDR also has been reduced to 0.50 percent with a maximum cap of Rs 150 per transaction.

MDR is the rate at which merchants are charged for payment processing services on debit or credit card transactions. The rates are being reduced by NPCI to boost asset lite infrastructure for digital payments.

"With the reduction and capping of MDR merchants will now be encouraged to accept debit cards, which up till now they were averse due to higher MDR structure," NPCI's managing director and CEO Dilip Asbe said.

With inputs from PTI